"Thou speak'st aright;/ I am that merry wanderer of the night./ I jest to Oberon and make him smile/ When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, /Neighing in likeness of a filly foal" (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2 Scene 1, 42-46)

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

When I was thirteen, I had a best friend. She was like the threads to my puppet: the one person that could keep me together when things were getting too hard. We talked whenever we could, we became so close, and I like to believe that we truly understood one another - laughing with each other, even without the other. She was outrageous, brave, outspoken, beautiful and witty; her stormy eyes were honest and calm. She was elegant, but she also had weaknesses; she needed me just as I needed her.

And believe me, I needed her, so much: this was the year where I sat on the edge of a cloudburst and watched a torrent of copious downpour tumble to my earth. But she sat with me, listened to the low drum of the water beating the ground, showed me where to a get a boat so I wouldn’t sink, and taught me to stitch feathers, to fly.

But I think I might have flown too far away, because I’m no longer a puppet and she’s no longer my threads. Her eyes that watched the tempest have found at last a stillness, where she walks with other angels. I pray that I am one of them, but that she flies with the ones who need her most, and who will be her laughs, her threads and her boats.